Saturday, February 08, 2014

UN complaint: Draft paragraph 31 on accommodation blockade through surveillance

Draft paragraph 31 (revised paragraph 30):

In addition to (albeit null and void) employment contracts, because the applicant’s wife is a psychologist by profession and N4CM’s Church and State website has a burgeoning section on the right to die, the applicant and his wife have sought and obtained two excellent references in both their names to help them assist persons with moderate disabilities as residents of the persons’ residence (see Annex 26, Live-in care: Personal references, pp. 66-67); to this end, they are contacting people associated with groups campaigning for a change in the law to legalise assisted suicide. Alternatively, given a modicum of assistance by a homeless organisation to help them find accommodation in the private rented sector, these two references could equally serve to help the applicant’s wife find positions as a caregiver to elderly persons in need once they have found a flat to live in. However, both the applicant and his wife are deeply concerned that the accommodation blockade through surveillance that they have experienced in London and in Brighton for now over a year a half will be extended to beyond the close of the WLCHC winter night shelter programme on 10 April 2014. They fail to understand why, for example, the SHP must see them both at least one month suitably employed on the streets before the homeless charity will provide them with support to access the private rented sector (see paragraph 30 above). And this despite the fact that the applicant and his wife are facing incarceration in April for rough sleeping in the Barbican estate, which is owned by the City of London (public property), for want of a place to safely sleep following the fencing off of their previous sleeping pitch in December 2013. The applicant and his wife’s predicament is further exacerbated by continuing to have their bandwidths repeatedly ‘squeezed’ in public libraries, Internet cafes and coffee shops (see, for example, the N4CM blog of 3 February 2014, “No internet connection in Southwark Council’s John Harvard Library while all around me surf without difficulty”). There is at least clear indication that the said accommodation blockade has no signs of being lifted, and that new lodging initiatives by the applicant have been and continue to be compromised beyond his or his wife’s control.